Text to Speech

Text to Speech chips seem to be dying out. I would think that by now, someone would have a $10 single-chip solution: serial text in, amplified speaker out. Surely the technology exists to do that. But there's no news, no progress. In fact, we're moving backwards; it's hard to find parts anymore. Votrax is dead. Speakjet development boards are backordered most places.

Looks like canned digitized sound is taking over, but I suspect there would be some strong interest in a standalone text-to-speech chip had someone gone down that road.

Anybody know of anything?

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

Have you look at: http://www.speechchips.com/
Actually I have just got my order (very quick shipping)
I purchased the TTS256 (serial interface) Text to Code IC for SpeakJet.
There is also a SoundGin Development Board for about the 2/3 of the price!

Chip's Propeller vocal tract simulator works fairly well (here) and PhiPi's phoneme to vocal tract parameter translator (attached) works as a front end. I think someone was working on a text to phoneme translator, but I don't have a reference to that.

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

They have been around for years and are one of the few survivors from the all companies that have developed/sold speech products. I have a few of their modules and they work great. One nice feature is that they have remained compatible and consistent on the interface throughout the life of that module.

Phonology standardization is a rather deceptive topic, not at all simple. Traveling as little as 100 miles reveals regional differences in pronunciation. In fact, efforts of trying to standardized a universal English pronunciation pretty much have reached absurd levels of debate. Every English dictionary publisher seems to put forth their own system of pronunciation while the United Nations attempts to enforce the rather exotic Universal Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) to encompass all spoken languages of the world.

Have you ever heard of "Mid-Atlantic English"? Many people believe it is to become the future of English pronunciation. This is not English pronounced by the the mid-Atlantic states of the USA or any other place on dry land, but is an ideal put forth that is half British and half American as created by the synthesis of rock n' roll between the two countries. And so, rather humorously, they chose to name the dialect for the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

So I suppose that any attempt to create a 'speech chip' would best be supported with an IDE that takes samples from the way people really speak and transfers it to text.

But that is only the first hurdle as spelling is idiosyncratic. So you have to create a vast lexicon that associated each word with the proper phonological elements - regardless of variations in spelling. And there in lies the real dilemma - you have to have a search engine stay ahead of the text it is reading and assemble sentences.

In some cases, a limited few words can easily be passably spoken. Or idiomatic phrases can be used in a predictable way. But reading whole large texts is not a small microcontroller project.

In other words, the project requires handling lots and lots of data. As a teacher of English as a foreign language, it is quite embarrassing to present 'standard pronunciation' while often having difficulty understanding Australians and Englishmen.

Hwang Xian Shen, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh.
All things considered, I can live and thrive without Microsoft products. LINUX is just fine.

To come up with a logical and consistent structure for english we should look at the mistakes children make as they are learning to speak. I found that my children and their friends made mistakes in pronunciation, spelling, and grammar that were due to the illogical and exception filled nature of the language. In almost all cases their choices made more sense than what is actually in use.

In science there is no authority. There is only experiment.
Life is unpredictable. Eat dessert first.

From time to time the SPO256 speech chip and its companion chip are available. It works on published plans for the BASIC Stamp so you could get it to work with a Propeller chip. I'm using a cache of these until the Propeller chip TTS is perfected.

Text to Speech chips seem to be dying out. I would think that by now, someone would have a $10 single-chip solution: serial text in, amplified speaker out. Surely the technology exists to do that. But there's no news, no progress. In fact, we're moving backwards; it's hard to find parts anymore. Votrax is dead. Speakjet development boards are backordered most places.

Looks like canned digitized sound is taking over, but I suspect there would be some strong interest in a standalone text-to-speech chip had someone gone down that road.

Anybody know of anything?

I've been developing a smarter MCU board that is about the same size as an Arduino UNO, but also contains a SpeakJet chip and audio amplifier too ... besides 28 3-pin connectors and other easy to use connections to whatever chip or module you use on the board. "RoboGuts™ S.T.E.A.M. Education Program" http://www.R2Pv1.com/

Have not figured out how to control the volume yet. Here is a little test. This sound in the video is very quiet! But - it works! This uses the code zipped in Mike Greens post above. I used the test code and modified it for the S3.

Any suggestions Phil?

Whit+

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney